We had bees where i grew up. Very good to have honey. Wise persons food and one of the five pures.

Since I have this space for some catharsis... I'll never forget the time my mother decided to make me a bee costume for a second grade project. Obviously she thought this was the cutest thing ever. The kids at school, not so much.

That woman knew more about me than any person who knows me. I took to the idea of reincarnation when I was younger, even before I settled on Buddhism and eventually "converted." After she passed, I hoped she would return in my family line somewhere. Who knows.

We need those bees, though. When I see some, I'm always sure to preserve their lives. They're incredibly valuable to the ecosystem and, as far as bugs go, not nearly as ugly as most insects! Lol.

I was recently back in Klamath Falls, Oregon, USA on a work trip. Several generations of my family (maternal) lived there, and I spent some time there too in my youth. A typical moment that is relevant to this topic:

One summer evening in the mid-1980s, my grandfather loaded several of us into his Plymouth station wagon to Go See Something. One of his friends invited everyone he knew over to his place to Come Watch a Thing. My grandfather thought we should not let this opportunity pass. So, what did we see upon our arrival?

There was still enough daylight for us to watch a man in his early 70s wind some rags around the end of a broom, soak those rags in gasoline (or kerosene?), and set it ablaze. Then, to the front yard, where in a sugar maple tree there lived a hive of honey bees. Under that hive was a ladder. We watched this old fool torch the bottom of the hive with that burning broom. He was trying to get the bees out by burning their home. Ever smelled a roasting beehive?

As a proud graduate of elementary school science, I knew 1) that honey bees are calmed by smoke, not agitated by it 2) the opening to the hive is at the bottom, so if you want the bees to leave, it's best not to block the door with a wad of flaming trash on a stick and 3) honey bees are great and ignorance leads people to make really bad decisions...

...after a few moments had passed, and only a handful of charred bees had tumbled out and the fire had mostly expired, our host took to smashing the hive like a piñata, cursing

We hung around the carcass of the hive well after dark, and the old people made smalltalk.

The point of this story: 1) don't be foolish about bees and 2) try not to make a spectacle of your own foolishness

The different sūtras in accord with the emptiness
taught by the Sugata are definitive in meaning;
One can understand that all of those Dharmas in
which a sentient being, individual, or person are taught are provisional in meaning.

Yes, stop the regime & proponents of the madness we're seeing from climate change deniers. They are willfully ignorant or in denial of the destructive processes that enrich a very few at the expense of everyone, including their own progeny.

The other thing we can do, is to raise bees, but if we don't change the thinking around commercial agriculture, climate change denial etc., it won't be enough - it has to begin with society demanding that we are truthful about what is really going on in the world, and electing the political will to address these difficult issues. Mind level is most important.

Apis Mellifera are not native to N. America. They have faced several crises through the recent decades as, most recently due to the proliferation of the Varroa mite. About the only thing you can do to really help Bees with the challenges they face, is to raise them yourself and increase the number of people involved practicing a more natural bee husbandry.

With commercial agriculture such as (for example) the almond groves in California, enormous numbers of bees are required for pollination in a very artificial setting. This places tremendous stress on the bees as they are shipped literally across & around the country by big operators taking advantage of the lucrative pollination contracts big Agra are forced to engage in. Honey is contaminated in this way, and must be pasteurized, destroying a lot of the natural goodness.

Combined with increased use of pesticides, proliferation of varroa & other stressors, we're seeing cases of massive colony collapse all throughout the world. Adding to the issue is the fact that in N. America where I live, there is a genetic bottleneck as importation is forbidden except in from New Zealand & a few other places where there is no varroa.

So only by going back to a situation where many people are keeping honey bees and taking proper care of them with the intent to select for traits conducive to honey production on a local scale, can we ensure that there is enough diversity to provide a base for bees to flourish. While there is a small resurgence in this type of activity due to the popularity of local farmer's markets, it's still not enough to counterbalance commercial agriculture and so the situation still looks quite dire. That's just honeybees.

Local pollinators are also hugely important, and we can help them by growing a garden instead of a huge useless lawn, planting trees, not using insecticides etc.

little bumble bumble bee
on the sidewalk curled up
i cried my heart out for you that day
your lifeless little body
so fuzzy and cute
thank you for all
you have done
thank you
for all you are
just being yourself
just being
a lover of flowers
a lover of nectar
a lover of life
little bumble bumble bee
a giver of life
so innocent and pure
that nobody knew you even existed
but i remember you
little honey bee
my honey bee
my honey

I don't understand how the fact that bees were able to learn to fly to a white piece of paper with no black circles in it has to do with a "profound" understanding of the concept of the number 0. I believe this is typically overblown, overhyped sensationalist science reporting.
The object the bees learnt to navigate towards was not "an empty set" after all, but a white sheet. It had less black on it than the other sheets, namely: nothing. How do they actually know that the bees "played with numbers" at all? Maybe they could simply distinguish "more black" from "less black".

And what do you think are the implications for using this to benefit AI research? I'm just curious and don't see how this would help AI research, nor how this "discovery" in particular, if brought to its application in AI, would presumably have dire consequences.

On topic: We have a huge and quite wild garden here. But I have not seen a single bee this year or last year. (Enough wasps and hornets, though.)

The administrator of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is now taking steps that could promote expanding the use of insecticides that are helping befuddle and kill off bees.

Neonicotinoids, the world’s most popular insecticides, affect the central nervous systems of insects, causing paralysis and death. The European Union imposed a partial ban on three neonicotinoids in 2013 because of the harm the insecticides can do to bees and butterflies that pollinate plants. Honeybee colonies have fallen by 59% in North America.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is considering allowing a type of neonicotinoid, thiamethoxam, manufactured by Syngenta, to be sprayed directly on about 165 million acres of wheat, barley, corn, sorghum, alfalfa, rice and potatoes. Thiamethoxam is currently used as a seed coating.

“If the EPA grants Syngenta’s wish, it will spur catastrophic declines of aquatic invertebrates and pollinator populations that are already in serious trouble,” said Lori Ann Burd, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health program.

Former President Barack Obama ordered the EPA in 2014 to assess the effect of pesticides, including neonicotinoids, on bees and other insects that pollinate plants. The EPA has been evaluating imidacloprid and clothianidin, manufactured by Bayer; thiamethoxam; dinotefuran, developed by Mitsui Chemicals; and acetamiprid, sold by Nisso Chemical.

Trump met with Bayer CEO Werner Baumann before he even took office, and a former lobbyist for the pesticide industry, Rebeckah Adcock, is now a top official at the Department of Agriculture. CropLife America, the trade group for the pesticide industry, has spent about $1.9 million on federal lobbying so far in 2017.

Syngenta CEO Erik Fyrwald has defended his company’s pesticides.

“There are numerous things impacting bee health,” Fyrwald said. “One of the very minor elements there is pesticides.”

The Trump-Pruitt EPA, which has decided it is OK to use pesticides that cause brain damage in children, was reluctant under Obama to take action on neonicotinoids. In January, the agency released draft risk reviews of dinotefuran, clothianidin and thiamethoxam that downplayed potential risks of the pesticides to bees.

Syngenta’s proposal was released on the same day in December that the EPA also released new assessments of risks from neonicotinoids to aquatic insects.

The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the EPA and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt in October, saying the agency hadn’t evaluated the impact of neonicotinoids on threatened and endangered species. The lawsuit claimed that the EPA violated the Endangered Species Act by approving products containing neonicotinoids without consulting federal wildlife officials on the potential risks to endangered species.

The different sūtras in accord with the emptiness
taught by the Sugata are definitive in meaning;
One can understand that all of those Dharmas in
which a sentient being, individual, or person are taught are provisional in meaning.

The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the EPA and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt in October, saying the agency hadn’t evaluated the impact of neonicotinoids on threatened and endangered species. The lawsuit claimed that the EPA violated the Endangered Species Act by approving products containing neonicotinoids without consulting federal wildlife officials on the potential risks to endangered species.

a-yaksha, because the report was "typically overblown, overhyped sensationalist science reporting" I see no value in the claims of the report, it is just a way try to get more funding to pester, even vivisect sweet bees.

I did think it was interesting, for whatever bee-son, they discerned a way to get their sucrose.

Glorious one, creator of all goodness, Mañjuśrī, his glorious eminence!Manjushri-namasamgiti

a-yaksha, because the report was "typically overblown, overhyped sensationalist science reporting" I see no value in the claims of the report, it is just a way try to get more funding to pester, even vivisect sweet bees.

“There are numerous things impacting bee health,” Fyrwald said. “One of the very minor elements there is pesticides.”

The Trump-Pruitt EPA, which has decided it is OK to use pesticides that cause brain damage in children, was reluctant under Obama to take action on neonicotinoids. In January, the agency released draft risk reviews of dinotefuran, clothianidin and thiamethoxam that downplayed potential risks of the pesticides to bees.

Syngenta’s proposal was released on the same day in December that the EPA also released new assessments of risks from neonicotinoids to aquatic insects.

The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the EPA and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt in October, saying the agency hadn’t evaluated the impact of neonicotinoids on threatened and endangered species. The lawsuit claimed that the EPA violated the Endangered Species Act by approving products containing neonicotinoids without consulting federal wildlife officials on the potential risks to endangered species.

This snippet from source quoted above is what I'm talking about. The greedy ba$tards pushing the use of pesticides know very well that "non-lethal" doesn't mean their pesticides are not deadly for bees. Saying that pesticides is a "minor" element, and citing "numerous other (unspecified) things..." is not any different than the days of big tobacco when they said that there was no link between smoking and health. The science may not have been definitive, but the link was obvious to anyone involved, especially those selling the products - they know very well the dangers and risks, but do everything possible to keep sales brisk, consequences be damned. In this case, short term gain for just a few people stacked up against one of the building blocks of our food chain. Their food chain too. Insanity.

In the case of colony collapse, we're seeing things we've never seen before, like ALL foragers in a hive not being able to find their way back home to the hive. This is most likely due to the use of pesticides. While they may not "kill bees dead" like RAID, on contact, they mess up their sensitive navigation system and that's it. A hive without foragers, the most mature bees in the colony, is done for. Quickly.

The people selling these pesticides are aware of this. People working with bees are aware of the effects of even C02 as it is widely used in instrumental insemination. Bees exposed to this natural substance ONE time have a WAY lower foraging rate ;upon recovery, compared with those not exposed - never mind pesticides designed to kill insects in the first place.

It really is madness. The use of political lobbying & use of selective science to forestall doing the right thing will probably always be with us, but an extremist, nationalist government hell bent on empowering corporations and enriching a few connected people, at the expense of our collective future, means that this type of BS goes pretty much unopposed. It's very discouraging.

a-yaksha, because the report was "typically overblown, overhyped sensationalist science reporting" I see no value in the claims of the report, it is just a way try to get more funding to pester, even vivisect sweet bees.

I did think it was interesting, for whatever bee-son, they discerned a way to get their sucrose.

The different sūtras in accord with the emptiness
taught by the Sugata are definitive in meaning;
One can understand that all of those Dharmas in
which a sentient being, individual, or person are taught are provisional in meaning.